


Never Mind, Scotty, Beam Me Back Down

by blue_bees



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Bodyswap, Gen, I can't believe that's already a tag but actually never mind that makes perfect sense, Inspired by Fanart, Transporter Malfunction, scotty spends most of his time fixing broken transporters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_bees/pseuds/blue_bees
Summary: A transporter malfunction gives Scotty a very bad day.  Bodyswap ridiculousness ensues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this piece of fanart: http://trashyscarface.tumblr.com/post/153047669317/transporter-malfunction  
> ...except I added a bit at the end that nobody asked for but it made me cackle like an idiot while writing it so yeah

He had it, he had it, he thought he had it. Scotty really thought he’d fixed it. Everything looked in order, honestly. He was under pressure, for god’s sake! It was awfully hard to focus when you had people yelling at you on their communicators. “Come on, Scotty!” “They’re looking for us, Scotty!’ “Beam us up already, Scotty!” “The natives have _spears_ , Scotty, what’s taking you so long?” Yadda yadda yadda, try this, try that, do it faster, Scotty, Scotty, Scotty. He wasn’t a bloody magician, you know. A miracle worker? Perhaps, but even he had limits. And in any case, there wasn’t really any reason the transporter should have malfunctioned. It looked like it had worked, too. The diagnostics checked out, he pressed the button, locked onto three bodies, and focused the confinement beam. It made the noise, there was an eruption of golden light, and three persons—Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura—all materialized beautifully on the pad. So far without a hitch.

That, however, is where his luck ran out.

 

For a moment, their faces were fairly neutral: the faces of someone who’d just had all of their neurons taken apart molecule by molecule and reassembled mid-thought. Then their eyes lit up with horrified realization as they looked at each other.

“Vhat ze hell?” asked Uhura in a heavy Russian accent.

Scotty felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Sulu let out an unusually girly shriek before steadying himself. “Alright, everyone,” he said in a slightly wavering voice, “Let’s not panic yet, but…”

Chekov grabbed a handful of his own curly hair and his face screwed up in incomprehension. “Am I…?”

“Vhat ze HELL?” repeated Uhura, louder this time.

Scotty wished a trapdoor would open under his feet and suck him into space. “So,” he said feebly, “There seems tae have been a wee mixup with the transporter. A wee, ah, malfunction.”

All three of them rounded on him.

“I’d call that a heck of a malfunction, sir,” said Chekov—no, Sulu, it was Sulu, Scotty corrected himself. So then… Uhura was currently in Sulu’s body, and Chekov in Uhura’s? That seemed right.

Uhura—in Sulu’s body but with an unmistakably Uhura-ish look on her face—strode out of the transporter and towards the control panel with such purpose that Scotty shrank back a bit. “The transporter did this?” she demanded. “How are we going to get Spock and Kirk and McCoy off of the planet’s surface? We were being chased by angry natives, we’ve got to get them up here soon!” She surveyed the panel before him. “Can you fix this?”

As if on cue, his communicator beeped. “Uh, how’s it going up there?” called in Kirk, a little out of breath. “Any reason you’re not beaming us out, say, right now?”

Scotty snatched up the communicator frantically. “Ah, captain, we’re having a wee malfunction here,” he repeated. “Just a wee… things aren’t going quite as expected, tae say the least.”

He heard Kirk give a heavy sigh and McCoy’s muffled cursing in the background. “A wee malfunction, huh. Scotty, how long do you think it’ll take to get it back in order? We don’t really have time for this.” There was a distant crashing noise and a hissed warning from somewhere beyond them.

Scotty looked helplessly at the transporter. He had no clue where to start, no precedent to tell him what on earth might have gone wrong in the countless circuits and components in the impossibly complicated console. He’d have to take it apart most likely, then reassemble it… a process that would take at least half an hour. He groaned. “A full hour, just tae figure out the problem,” he responded. “And even then I cannae tell if I could fix it.”

Sulu’s hand came down heavily on his shoulder as Uhura grabbed him. “You can’t just leave them down on the planet! They’re in danger!” she hissed.

Scotty turned to her, panicked. “But I cannae just beam them up, ladd—I mean, lassie! Look at yourselves! I dinnae know if I can fix this!”

Sulu came over, his grim expression seeming out-of-place on Chekov’s youthful face. “We have to risk it. They were this close to catching up with us when we beamed up. If we wait much longer, they're going to get captured, or worse.”

The communicator beeped again. “Scotty?” came a voice tinged with panic. “We can’t wait an hour. If you have any ideas, now is the time.” Something crashed through the bushes on the other end of the connection. “ _Scotty!_ ”

“I-” he began, but Uhura had grabbed the communicator. “We’re getting you out of there,” she said. “Hold on. This might get really weird really fast.”

“Sulu?” asked Kirk, confused. “Are you-”

“Vill zhey-” asked Chekov.

“Wait, no!” yelped Scotty, but Uhura locked onto them and punched the command to energize.

 

All four stared at the buzzing globs of golden light forming on the platform with trepidation. It occurred to Scotty that perhaps the first malfunction had been just a fluke, a crazy happenstance of probability and nature, a one-in-a-billion event never to be repeated. Then the three senior officers fully materialized in the transporter, and he felt his heart sink even lower. Well, it had been a nice theory while it lasted.

At first, he wasn’t certain who was who. They simply stared at each other with the same incomprehension that had seized the first three, still as statues. Then McCoy’s face burst into a wild, bewildered grin and Spock turned green with a furious outburst of disbelief. “Fascinating,” said Kirk, calmly examining his hands.

“What the hell?” yelled Spock, who was now without a doubt McCoy. He grabbed at his face, his hair, and felt his now-pointy ears. He turned an even more livid shade of green and then turned to his body—currently in the care of Kirk—and grabbed it by the shirt. “What’s going on, dammit? How did I end up in- how’d I end up like this? Who-” He turned furiously to the four looking on. “How did this happen?”

Kirk’s body raised an eyebrow in an extremely un-Kirk-like way. “It seems that the transporter has made some sort of mistake, thereby transferring our consciousnesses to different bodies during transit. You have ended up in my body, I have ended up in the captain’s, and he has ended up in the possession of yours.” He—Spock—surveyed those off of the platform. “It would additionally seem that Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura have already undergone something similar. Am I correct, Mr. Scott, in assuming that this is the ‘wee malfunction’ of which you spoke?”

Scotty nodded mutely. I’m going to get fired, he thought. And go down in history as the first Chief Engineer to ever accidentally swap the bodies of all the senior officers. Which would’ve actually been a decent achievement, he reflected a tad morosely, if that had been what he’d been trying to do.

Kirk laughed in helpless shock as he tried to pull himself away from McCoy’s grasp. “Calm down, Sp- Bones.” He looked over at Spock. “You know, I am pretty handsome. But this is just weird.”

McCoy shook him a little bit. “Jim, focus! We’ve got to figure out how to fix this! You can’t just parade around in my body from now on, and I’m sure as hell not going to be stuck as a green-blooded Vulcan for the rest of my life. What are we going to tell the crew?”

Kirk’s smile suddenly became far more sober. “Yeah, this is going to be a problem.” He stared thoughtfully at Spock, who gazed levelly back at him from his own blue eyes. “There’s no way you could pass for me right now, you look way too severe. Try to smile, relax.”

Spock unfolded his arms from behind his back and dangled them awkwardly at his sides and attempted a smile. His lips drew back from his teeth in an uncomfortable grimace-grin that somehow made him look infinitely less Kirk-like than before. Kirk frowned. “Ah, forget it. We’re just going to have to either fix it or tell them.”

Bones let out a tortured sigh and Kirk booped him on the Vulcan nose. “Don’t lose heart yet, my Vulcan doctor. I’m sure Scotty can work this out in—how long did you say it might take?—an hour, right?”

All eyes snapped back to Scotty and he abruptly resumed wishing that he would be ejected into space. “Aye,” he responded weakly. “...ideally.”

“Ideally.”

“Aye,” he repeated, “ideally, but in practice, ah, more than an hour. Considerably more, probably.”

“More? Why more?”

“Well, initially you just asked how long it might take tae fix the transporter up a bit. But tae fix it and figure out a way tae get ye all sorted out?” Scotty shook his head. “Who knows how long? Probably a day, at least. So…” He tried to grin good-naturedly, but it came off more forced than even Spock’s smile and he gave up. “Just… get comfortable for now, I guess,” he finished lamely, mouth dry.

They all stared at him, mismatched minds in scrambled bodies. Chekov glanced down awkwardly at his—well, Uhura’s—chest, and she swatted him. “Not too comfortable,” she hissed, and he blushed slightly under the deep brown of his cheeks.

Scotty sighed deeply and looked at the transporter, apparently in perfect working condition except for the wee problem somewhere within it that had caused such a dramatic mess as this. He was deliberating how he should go about fixing it when something crashed behind him, and he jumped. He turned to see Keenser standing in the doorway, oystery face seized with an expression that probably only Scotty could identify as dismay, a broken cup of coffee at his feet. He scanned the confused mess of people in front of him, then looked at Scotty. _Seriously?_ his eyes seemed to say. _Why do I get the feeling this is entirely your fault?_

“Ach, dinnae even start,” snapped Scotty. “Make yourself useful and help me fix it, why don’t ye? And start by cleaning up that mess you made!” He pointed to the spreading pool of liquid coming from the cracked cup in front of him, wincing slightly at the realization that it was actually his teacup. Why had Keenser been drinking coffee out of his favorite teacup? He’d really have to talk to him about not stealing his stuff at some point.

As he turned back to the six Starfleet officers, he had to admit that it looked pretty weird. Uhura was pulling flower petals out of Sulu’s pocket in confusion, Sulu was gently patting Chekov’s curls in amusement, Chekov was stroking Uhura’s ponytail with an obvious effort to not look down at her chest, Kirk was gently patting McCoy’s butt and making appreciative noises, McCoy looked ready to Vulcan Death Grip him, and Spock was… meditating? Something like that.

Scotty clapped his hands together. “All right, all of ye, shove off. I’ve got tae get fixing this thing, and I cannae have you makin’ a mess in here. No, not- Not you!” he shouted as Keenser attempted to sneak out with everyone else. “I need you tae help me fix this up, wee man. Don’t you dare try tae get out of it.”

Keenser shot him a look that could melt a hole through glass but came back anyhow. Scotty sat down heavily in the chair in front of the console and sighed again, head in hands. “What am I going tae do to fix this? What am I going tae do?”

 

* * *

 

 

When Sulu walked in the next morning, Scotty had the transporter wide open, electronic guts tangled and spilling onto the floor around the space where he knelt. He looked up and his exhausted face brightened for a moment before he remembered that the young visage of Chekov was currently in the helmsman’s care. “Ah, hello, Sulu,” he said, a little disappointed. “I thought ye might be that wee whiz Chekov come tae help me out a bit. Keenser hasn’t been nearly as helpful as- say, where did the wee man go?” He looked around crossly for the small alien but couldn’t find him anywhere in the room.

Sulu sat next to him. “I think I saw him heading for the replicator for coffee.”

Scotty snorted. “Typical.”

Sulu shrugged. “And Chekov… I honestly think he’s having far too much fun. He found out how strong Uhura is and has been running around picking heavy things up and challenging me to arm wrestling matches.” He shook his head with a half-smile. “You have missed a lot of chaos. Kirk decided to wait to tell the crew so that he could prank them, and came on the bridge dancing and singing some old classical song at the top of his lungs. You should’ve seen the bridge crew’s face when the CMO came in singing “Bootylicious” as loud as he could, with the Vulcan first officer roaring after him. Someone recorded the whole thing, and I doubt that McCoy will ever live it down. Or Spock, for that matter, but he seems pretty much at peace with his temporary human form.”

He paused as Uhura came in, following Keenser. Keenser came over and handed Scotty a cup of coffee. Scotty took a sip and was gratified to see that the cup in question was his teacup, superglued a bit shoddily together. He glanced over at Keenser, who was silently watching him drink with his own cup in hand, and felt a little better.

Sulu frowned up at Uhura. “I’ll never get used to watching my body wander around without me. It’s just weird.”

Scotty grunted, wrangling with the mess of cables in front of him. “Well, with any luck, lad, ye won’t have to.” He took a sip of coffee and then set it aside, crawling half-inside of the console on his stomach. “I think I might’a just figured out what the problem is, but if I’m right, I cannae fix it until I’ve got ye all straightened out.”

“Really? Why? What’s wrong with it?” asked Sulu, looking closer as though he could figure it out just by looking at the mess of cords in front of him. He supposed that if he really had been Chekov, he’d be able to tell, but apparently inhabiting his body didn’t come with the perks of accessing his brain.

Scotty closed a panel and began to replace wires to their rightful spots. “Well, when the transporter brings you somewhere, it takes you and breaks you into wee bits and sends ‘em whizzing off and puts ‘em all back together on the other end. But it cannae just send the bits, it has tae remember all of the chemical interactions currently going on in your molecules tae make sure it doesn’t reassemble ye as a corpse. But as far as I can tell, it’s got them all switched up.” He looked out at them to see if they were following. “So Sulu, Uhura’s thought processes and such were uploaded—that’s the closest term—tae your body.” He shrugged. “Really more of a software problem than hardware.”

They gave him twin skeptic looks. “But how would that work? Wouldn’t it just-”

“I dinnae know! I’m not a neurologist, I just fix transporters!”

“And how are you going to get us back?” asked Uhura. “No offense meant to you, Sulu, but I’d far rather be back in my own body again.”

“Ach, well, that’s why I cannae fix it yet. If I put ye all through again like this, it’ll mix ye up again, and maybe you’ll come out on the other end all right.” He furrowed his brow at Keenser, who was in the process of pulling his short torso up on top of the transporter control panel, but the small alien didn’t notice.

Uhura let out a long sigh. “Well, I’ll round everyone up once you’ve put the transporter back together again. This is going to be like herding cats.”

“I’ll help,” said Sulu, standing, then added, with a laugh, “I can do zat!”

“Good luck,” called Scotty after them. He banged on the underside of the transporter panel to get Keenser’s attention. “Oi! Get off of there! And take your coffee with you, too, I dinnae want ye spilling it all over the console."

 

* * *

 

“Great. Just great. We’re going through the same damned device that screwed us all over when disassembling our molecules in the hope that this time it’ll fix everything? How does that make sense?” McCoy was still fuming to the point that Scotty thought he could almost see smoke rising from his pointed green ears. He hoped that Spock wouldn’t return to his body to find he’d been given a premature heart condition. He hoped that Spock would be able to return to his body, period. He was still not completely sure how smoothly it would work.

“Well, it’s the best hope we’ve got,” he said as reassuringly as he could muster. “But, ah, just tae be safe, perhaps you three should go second. Just in case something goes a wee bit wrong.”

“Like vhat?” asked Chekov from behind him.

“Oh! Well! Nothing, probably nothing, but you cannae ever tell, can ye?” He laughed nervously and began pushing him onto the platform. “You three just get into the transporter and I’ll beam ye down tae the planet and right up again, that ought tae do the trick.”

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy looked on as the three of them crowded together on the platform with bated breath. Scotty bit his lip in anticipation. Keenser sat in a corner, not really paying attention. Typical Keenser.

“I hope this works,” said Uhura, looking pointedly at Chekov. He frowned balefully. “I vill miss you,” he said mournfully to Uhura’s arms, kissing her bicep. She made a face and looked at Sulu. “Ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be to get my body back.”

“Then energize!”

Scotty locked on and pushed the button, and they vanished in a swirl of sound and light.

 

They materialized alone in the middle of a field, relieved to be far out of the reach of the natives, and checked themselves over.

“Not quite,” said Sulu, looking down to see a red dress extending down beneath him. “I’m Uhura and she… are you Chekov?”

Chekov’s blond curls bounced as Uhura nodded. Chekov opened and closed Sulu’s hands. “Does zhis mean something vent wrong?” he asked.

Uhura grabbed the communicator she had been holding as Sulu from his hands and flipped it open. “Let’s find out.”

 

There was a pause in the transporter room before Scotty’s communicator beeped. “Hello?” he said, picking it up.

“We’ve been switched around, that’s for sure, but we’re not back the right way yet.”

“Is that Chekov without a Russian accent?” whispered Kirk in confusion.

“Has somezhing gone wrong, zhen?” asked another voice.

“Is that Sulu _with_ a Russian accent?” whispered Kirk again.

Scotty shook his head, then remembered that they couldn’t see him. “Nay, I expected that might happen. Beamin’ you back up now.” He pressed a couple of buttons and the transporter came to life again, building the three of them atom by atom until they stood side-by-side on the transporter, blinking.

“I’m…” began Sulu.

“Yes!” yelled Uhura, twirling around. She smiled at the sensation of her ponytail and skirt swishing after her. “That’s more like it!”

Chekov broke into a grin as well. “Zhere ve go! Home sweet home.” He hugged himself and grinned maniacally at Sulu.

McCoy stepped forwards. “All right, that’s enough. I can’t wait to get back to being my old human self.”

Spock narrowed his eyes at him. “I cannot say, Doctor, that I have particularly enjoyed being human. And neither have I enjoyed watching you misuse my body so.”

Kirk strode between them and threw his arms over their shoulders. “Well I had fun, but it’s high time we got back to our proper places. Scotty?”

“Aye, captain.” He placed his hands on the console. “Beaming you down.”

There was a sparkling of light and they were gone.

 

McCoy instantly felt comforted by the feeling of a heart beating steadily away in his chest. His chest! He wasn’t Vulcan anymore! “Thank god for that,” he said, then frowned at the voice that came out. He looked over at Spock and saw his own body glaring back.

“Now that’s a sight I’d be glad to never see again,” he said.

Kirk blinked at him from Vulcan eyes. “Hopefully, you’ll ever have to.” He paused and looked down. “I have a really nice butt.” He reached over and touched it. McCoy turned to him, furious, but whatever he had been planning to say dissolved into the sound of the transporter beaming them back up.

 

As the three senior officers rematerialized on the transporter platform, Scotty let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The three looked at each other and collectively began inspecting themselves.

“Boy am I glad to be back,” breathed McCoy, looking himself over. “And in one piece, too! The biggest miracle of modern science is that it hasn’t killed us a hundred times over.”

Spock looked closely at him. “On the contrary, doctor, modern science is the only reason a good number of us are alive.”

Kirk jumped into the air with a triumphant whoop as he finished checking that his body was in working order. “All right! Well, let’s never do that again.”

“I concur, captain.”

“As do I. And speaking of which, I’m going to find and delete that video you took of me singing if it’s the last thing I do on this green earth.”

Kirk laughed. “Oh, you’re far too late for that. I already sent it to everybody on this ship.” He leaned a little closer to McCoy’s face. “ _Everyone._ ”

McCoy narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did. AND I sent it to-”

“Alright,” interrupted Scotty hurriedly, hoping he wouldn’t have to deal with an all-out fight. “Not tae break up the party or anything, but we’ve got tae get the transporters back so we don’t have tae figure out who’s who every time we beam anyone anywhere.”

“Ooooh! Ooooh! I can help vith zat!” offered Chekov cheerfully, bouncing a little bit at the mere thought.

“Ah, thanks, laddie, but I think I’ve got it under control for now. Just a bit of a tune up, that’s all. Software bug, I think. But,” he added hurriedly as Chekov’s smile slipped a little bit, “you’re welcome tae watch if ye really feel like it.”

He watched the rest of the crew file out, talking, laughing, enjoying the privilege of being themselves, in their own skins. He looked back to where Chekov was poking intently at the transporter display and could feel the all-nighter beginning to catch up with him, so he walked over and sat down. A small, knobbly grey-green hand touched his shoulder, and he turned his head to see Keenser sitting up on top of the readout panel.

“You shouldn’t be up there,” he said, only half-pretending to be annoyed. “Ye might press a button with your wee bum.”

Keenser didn’t respond, just stared at him with his inscrutable pencil-tip eyestalks. Then he slowly lifted his hand and raised it into a small thumbs-up.

Scotty chuckled and gave him a thumbs-up back, then turned to the panel and got to work.

 

He had it this time, he really thought he had. Oh, perhaps he was a wee bit sleep-deprived, and certainly he’d seen better days focus-wise. But with Chekov’s help, he straightened out the transporter fairly quickly, all things considered, and neither of them could find a problem. He even ran a diagnostic on it, which checked out perfectly fine—though admittedly it had checked out fine before the initial malfunction, at least he knew that he hadn’t created some new problem in the process of trying to fix it. An elegant solution for a problem that had turned out to be fairly simple; a job well done.

“So it works now?” asked Kirk, looking at the transporter thoughtfully. It sat there, innocently, as though it hadn’t just pulled the most ludicrous existentialist stunt of a lifetime.

“I see no reason it shouldn’t,” replied Scotty, tactfully neglecting to mention that he’d seen no reason for it to malfunction the first time, either.

“Sounds encouraging! So! I hope you’re not expecting to use me as your guinea pig, are you?”

“Really, captain, ye don’t trust me tae do my job that much?” he said, a little indignant.

“Now now, Scotty, I simply meant that _if_ it were to _somehow malfunction_ , I’d rather it be someone else’s turn to get bodyswapped.”

“Why, I’m so certain it’s all fixed up, I’d…” He hesitated, rethought how he was going to end his sentence, then looked over at Keenser. “I’d send Keenser through it!” Keenser shot him a look. Scotty ignored it.

“Just Keenser? But don’t you need two people to make absolutely sure that it’s fixed?”

“...Aye.” Scotty didn’t like where this was going.

“And you’re confident you fixed it?”

“I...well, aye.”

Kirk smiled benignly. “Then why don’t you just hop up into the transporter and see?”

Scotty sighed and stepped onto the platform with Keenser. He was almost entirely certain he’d fixed it, but you could never be sure about these things, and he wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of using himself as a test dummy. “Alright, but ye cannae send me down to the planet. If something were to go wrong, I want tae be right in this room tae fix it.”

“Got it.” Kirk stepped behind the console, punched in coordinates, and smiled at Scotty as he said the words that were so often spoken from the other side of the glass. “Energize.”

Scotty felt the bizarre tingling of his individual molecules being disassembled, organs, ligaments all being broken down to their constituent elements and transmuted into a waveform, then…

The equally unsettling feeling of being reassembled roiled in his stomach as he materialized on the opposite side of the room, the golden glow in the transporter just barely fading. He still felt the buzzing of his skin, familiar now from the years he’d spent being shuttled back-and-forth by these things. But something beneath that felt unnatural, and radically so, and as the glow faded from him he realized that this had nothing to do with the transporter.

He turned and looked to the side, dreading what he might see, and saw legs and a torso as though through some sort of dark screen or glass, the colors all wrong. He looked up—up, for god’s sake!—and looked directly into the face of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott.

“You—you—” he sputtered, voice sounding rough and unnatural, unused.

Keenser looked down, intrigued, at his own alien face below him. He looked at the human hands and legs that he had currently acquired and considered them.

“Cool,” he said. He looked up and stared at Kirk’s face with interest. Kirk looked somewhere between aghast and on the verge of laughter. Keenser looked down at his legs again. He was tall, he thought. He’d always been tall for his species, but this was different. He looked at the tiny figure currently in the care of Scotty that was raging against his leg ineffectually, sputtering, and decided that he liked being tall right now. Also, he liked being able to see lots of colors. He liked knowing that he was wearing red.

He decided that he was going to walk out now to look at more colors, and to get away from Scotty, who looked mad enough to kill someone or something. So he walked to the door a tad clumsily with his new fumbling long legs and left.

Scotty was indeed mad enough to kill someone, if only he could reach their throat. Unfortunately, his stubby little legs were not cooperating, which just made him madder. He turned to Kirk, who had finally been pushed over the edge from horror to pure hilarity when Keenser had strode out the door.

“Dinnae just stand there laughing,” he sputtered, “help me catch him! His—my—my wee legs cannae keep up with—stop laughing! I-”

But Kirk could barely breathe or even stand up straight, so with a final gesture of pure exasperation Scotty headed out for the door while still spitting in fury and frustration. His tiny little legs would have to do for now.


End file.
